Although higher education fared a little better in this year’s legislative session than in recent years, there’s no escaping the trend of dwindling state funding for our public universities and colleges. Some analysts are predicting it will disappear altogether before long.

Business leaders know that when one revenue source dries up, it’s time to diversify funding streams. Universities now need to do the same. In this new world of diminished public support, as we work to increase philanthropic contributions, student enrollment and research funding, an entrepreneurial approach is key.
This phenomenon isn’t unique to higher education. Uncertainty pervades many sectors in our increasingly global economy, with recent financial crises and political unrest around the world and people, information, products and ideas flowing across borders at an unprecedented rate.

In the face of these changes, entrepreneurship — the ability to seize new business opportunities despite indeterminate outcomes — is emerging as the engine fueling innovation, employment generation and economic growth.

Universities not only have to act more creatively to stay afloat, they have an important role to play in teaching the skills that nurture an entrepreneurial mindset and in preparing future leaders for solving more complex, interlinked and fast-changing problems.

Furniture mogul Jake Jabs is known for his personal thriftiness, but his gift of $10 million to the University of Colorado-Denver’s business school shows he’s got no problems spending his fortune to help the community.

The donation from Jabs, whose American Furniture Warehouse operates 12 stores in Colorado, is the largest in CU Denver’s history, reports The Post’s Steve Raabe. The money will go to help expand the business school’s entrepreneurship program, which will be renamed the Jake Jabs Center for Entrepreneurship.

Jabs in 2011 donate $25 million for a new business school at his alma mater, Montana State University.

The 82-year-old Jabs, who owns one suit and drives a 7-year-old Chevy Yukon, offered this advice to young entrepreneurs: “Live below your means, keep your credit good and pay cash when you buy a car. Not having debt really helped me get to where I am.”

A fascinating new study is out today, which finds that legalized medical marijuana has not boosted pot use among teens.

The study’s authors are experts from the University of Colorado Denver, Montana State University and the University of Oregon. Not to imply that these are professors of joint-rolling from High Times University, but I’m skeptical of their findings — which haven’t been peer reviewed.

For many of us in Colorado, it just seems hard to believe. And I say that as someone who personally supports both medical marijuana and decriminalization.

I’ve watched parades of young people — most of whom were barely out of their teens — go in and out of dispensaries in Denver and Boulder. I’ve seen the reports of increased youth among teens. I’ve witnessed the annual 4/20 smokeouts in Boulder and Denver, which look more like the crowd at an LMFAO concert than at a Dead show.

And you’re asking me to believe that making the forbidden fruit more readily available isn’t increasing use among those who love forbidden-fruit salad?

“There is anecdotal evidence that medical marijuana is finding its way into the hands of teenagers, but there’s no statistical evidence that legalization increases the probability of use,” Daniel I. Rees, a professor of economics at the University of Colorado Denver, said in a release.

Rees and co-author D. Mark Anderson of Montana State University are the same folks who published a study last year linking passage of medical marijuana laws to drops in traffic fatalities. I was skeptical of that one as well.

I agree with your editorial about Metro State College’s performance pay plan, but The Post has missed a much bigger issue on the Auraria campus. The $2 million pay plan is small change compared to the $111 million science building scheduled for groundbreaking on Friday.

Many have seen the signs along Speer Boulevard announcing the new building (and renovations to the existing science building). Unfortunately, Gov. Bill Ritter has proposed slashing funding for the building to $25 million, a cut that could effectively cancel the project. Read more…

Your article about the possible smoking ban at all University of Colorado campuses mentioned that only about 11 percent of the university population responded to the online poll. According to the e-mail that University of Colorado Denver students received on Nov. 13 containing the link to the survey, “access to the tobacco survey is restricted to university campus locations or through your university VPN.”

I don’t have a university VPN, so I would have had to use an on-campus computer to respond to the survey. As a full-time grad student at UC Denver, it’s challenging enough to race from work to arrive on time to class, without trying to work in a moment to visit the computer lab. I believe there would have been more response to the survey had students been able to access it from off-campus computers.

Aurora seems pained that the University of Colorado Denver’s facilities in Aurora are silent as to Aurora’s name. Perhaps the law should be changed to allow the name University of Colorado Denver at Aurora, or something like that, to pass — but I wouldn’t build my future on it. Read more…

Vincent Carroll is The Denver Post's editorial page editor. He has been writing commentary on politics and public policy in Colorado since 1982 and was originally with the Rocky Mountain News, where he was also editor of the editorial pages until that newspaper gave up the ghost in 2009.

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